The three women kept their jumpers and coats on, for it was cold in the warehouse, the concrete floor and iron roof keeping the vast stores of tinned food and medical supplies at the right temperature to stop them from going off. Unstrapping Daisy from the pushchair, Peggy took her over to the knot of little ones playing on mats in a corner under the watchful eye of several sprightly grandparents who’d volunteered for the job while the young mothers packed the food parcels. Once Daisy was happily occupied with a doll’s house, Peggy joined Kitty and Charlotte at the long table where the POW boxes were being filled.

The Red Cross provided a bewildering array of different parcels to be sent abroad, some with medical supplies, others with food, or recreational things like board games, jigsaw puzzles and books. Prisoners’ next of kin could send their own parcels, but these were strictly checked for anything not on the permitted list of goods, and then weighed before they were sent out. Medical supplies were being transported to the internment camps across Europe, but the Japanese had barred the Red Cross personnel access to their camps and had refused to accept any parcels, which was in direct defiance of the Geneva Convention. Whether the Germans allowed their prisoners to have their parcels wasn’t known, but it seemed that at least they were being delivered, and the inspectors permitted into the camps.

The three women set to with a will in the food section, each of them praying that their loved ones would benefit from the tins of meat, vegetables and fish, and enjoy the luxury of butter, biscuits, tins of cigarettes and bars of Cadbury’s chocolate. It had been explained to them that each parcel must contain a balance of fat, protein and sugar to supplement what was probably a very poor diet in the camps, and that things like jam, dried egg, tea and cocoa would be a boost to the prisoners’ morale.

Once each box was filled and firmly tied with string, it was sent down the line to the women who were responsible for addressing them before they were transported by truck to the mailing centres. There were so many POW camps now that each depot was responsible for a particular area, and the one in Cliffehaven covered a vast swathe of Germany, so it was quite possible that Martin, Roger and Freddy might be the recipients of parcels packed right here at home.

Peggy, Kitty and Charlotte had of course sent their own private parcels as next of kin – even though there was very little available in the shops to make them interesting – but so far there had been no acknowledgement from their men to say they’d received them.